This effect is supposed to give the impression of a smooth, wavy surface.
It uses heavily blurred and partially transparent tones with a repeating
contour to do this. Below is what the Satin effect looks like when extracted
from the deconstructed example image at the bottom of the page. The background
was left showing, so the white areas you see are transparent in the effect’s
layer.
This effect is hard to work with. Varying the settings even a little bit
makes for big changes in the way it looks. Here is the effect’s dialog
box.
This is the Satin effect applied with the default settings.
- Blend Mode - Play with these for special effects. The default of Multiply causes the tonal modifications to be toward darkness.
- Color box - Does not show a name, but it’s the little color square to the right of the Blend Mode setting. Click on the square to access the color picker and change the color of the Satin overlay.
- Opacity - Use a higher setting to make the effect more pronounced. A lower setting will make the effect less visible.
- Angle - Drag on the line within the circle to change the direction
from which the waves in the image appear to be lit.
You can also drag in the image to change the Angle.
- Distance - Has something to do with how much the repeating contour is offset, but I have to admit I don’t fully understand what it does. You’ll have to experiment.
- Size - I think this has to do with the scaling of the contour you choose, but I’m not sure.
- Contour - This is the heart and soul of the Satin effect. The
contour you pick determines the form of the waves. See the Contour
page for information on this feature.
Here is an example of the Satin effect using the Ring-Double contour.
- Invert - Reverses the transparent and colored portions of the effect.
And here is the Layers palette after the effect was deconstructed by choosing Layer > Layer Style > Create Layers.
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